


Prompt: Never Expected

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [119]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Codependency, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 20:19:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10838691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Pietro jokes, Wanda thieves. Pietro jokes with the Avengers, teases them, mocks them, laughs at them.Wanda steals sanity and rational thought from their skulls and replaces it with nothing by fear, the deepest of fears, the most traumatic of fears, the same fear which has driven them since they were ten.But: that is not all they are.What they are is not ever expected.





	Prompt: Never Expected

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucdarling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucdarling/gifts).



> Written for a prompt on my tumblr "Maximoff twins, joker and the thief", for lucdarling.

**i.**    
They both joke. They both thieve.

Wanda jokes with strangers, makes them think the twins are normal. Pietro jokes with Wanda, pulling her from the worst of her melancholy. Pietro steals food for them, and books and clothes and a hairbrush for Wanda. Wanda steals secrets and knowledge, steals information from loose lips and scared children, other students and protesters; anything to keep them both safe.

People see Wanda and call her witch, think _thief_  - of souls and secrets and magic. People see Pietro and think _joker._  Think _wildcard._

People never expected the truth of the twins.

 

* * *

 

**ii.**  
The truth of the twins is this: complex and intertwined, balanced in all things, the same things for different purposes, different things for the same purpose. All that they are divided up between them, ensuring they are safe, they are strong, they _survive._

That is the difference between them and others, sometimes. They _survive_  and do not care to live. They cannot live until their vengeance is done.

 

* * *

 

**iii.**  
They joke, they thieve, they make their way through the streets and through school and through protests until they are lost on the streets of their city, surviving and hoping, barely adults, just barely.

“Join us,” say the shady secret groups, trying - they say - to give power to the people so they may fight back. “Join us and we will give you the strength to fight.”

The twins look to each other, consider. Survival at all costs. Vengeance at all costs.

This is a cost they pay without thinking.

 

* * *

 

**iv.**  
They survive, others do not. The scientists listen to Pietro spitting insults and wit, listen to his demands to see his sister and judge him wild, judge him uncontrollable, judge him nothing but a loose canon only controlled by his sister’s whim, his sister’s scarlet.

They look at Wanda’s silence, Wanda’s consideration and think her nothing but a clever-enough young woman who might tame her brother to their whim. They do not see either of them thieve secrets from them.

 

* * *

 

**v.**  
Pietro thieves secrets by listening, by watching, by reading papers as he runs at almost twice the speed of sound. Wanda thieves secrets by watching minds, by sending stealing scarlet into them and eking out the knowledge she seeks.

It is she who keeps them, ever and always, balanced on the brink of leaving, and never lets List or Strucker know.

 

* * *

 

**vi.**  
Joker and thief, joker and thief, these two things people judge them as without thinking. 

The Avengers do it too, see Pietro taunting the archer and think he is a joker and a wildcard and a loose canon. See Wanda stealing into minds and think her a thief and a danger. They never see Pietro stealing clothes and toys and medicine for the needy, never see how Wanda jokes with small children so when something odd happens they come to her and tell her of a metal man waiting in the church.

 

* * *

 

**vii.**  
Pietro jokes, Wanda thieves. Pietro jokes with the Avengers, teases them, mocks them, laughs at them.

Wanda steals sanity and rational thought from their skulls and replaces it with nothing by fear, the deepest of fears, the most traumatic of fears, the same fear which has driven them since they were ten.

But: that is not all they are.

What they are is not ever expected.

 

* * *

 

**viii.**  
The twins are never expected, not their depth of feeling, not their strength, not their total absolute observances of the laws they have bound their lives around.

People look at them and see them thus: the witch and the wildcard, the leader and the follower, the thief and the joker.

No one sees them for who they are but each other.

 

* * *

 

**ix.**  
Steve Rogers, the Captain, does not see them for who they are but he sees that he can trust them, or maybe he trusts without thinking, decides to trust and hope and pray that doing so is the right thing to do.

He trusts. They fight. They buy themselves but a moment more of time.

 

* * *

 

**x.**  
At the end of it all Wanda is torn out and empty, her heart gone and her stomach and all herself, until there is nothing but bones and tears and clawing fingers that reach desperately for the brother that isn’t there any more.

There is no one to divide purpose with, no brother to be sister to, no guard for her to guide, no more the division of purpose between them.

The twins, together, were never what other’s expected.

Alone and apart, Wanda does not know what she _is._

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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